Data Center Power: Grid to Chip

Not investment advice. This video summarizes public sources and MESH's CORTEX notes as of October 2026. Company figures are the companies' own claims.

Transcript

0:00 · Intro

Here's a plain-English look at power in the AI data center, from the grid all the way to the chip, as of October 2026. We'll follow the electricity step by step, and map where the power electronics industry is heading.

0:13 · Why now

Why now? Because AI runs on electricity, and demand is climbing fast. The IEA expects data center electricity use to roughly double, from 485 terawatt hours in 2025 to 950 in 2030. In the US, a Berkeley Lab study for the Energy Department puts data centers at 6.7 to 12 percent of all electricity by 2028, up from 4.4 percent in 2023. Amazon's Andy Jassy put it plainly: the single biggest constraint is power.

0:43 · The chain

Here's the journey. Power arrives from the utility at medium voltage, for example 35 kilovolts. A transformer steps it down to about 415 volts AC, a UPS conditions it, and busways carry it to the racks. In the rack, power supplies convert it to about 50 volts DC. On the board it drops to 12 volts, and finally to about one volt at the chip. Every step loses some energy. Nvidia says today's chain can be less than 90 percent efficient end to end. The first bottleneck is the grid itself.

1:12 · Grid & site

Texas grid operator ERCOT is tracking about 474 gigawatts of large loads seeking to connect, about 90 percent of them data centers. That's more than five times its record peak. JLL puts the average wait for a grid connection at about four years. Forecasts run hot too: Grid Strategies thinks US utility forecasts overstate data center load by about 25 gigawatts. The heavy equipment is scarce too. In Wood Mackenzie's 2025 survey, power transformers took about 128 weeks to deliver on average, and their prices are up 77 percent since 2019. GE Vernova's gas turbine backlog and reservations reached 116 gigawatts, while it makes about 20 gigawatts of turbines a year, aiming for 30 by 2030. So builders are making their own power, behind the meter. Cleanview counts about 90 gigawatts of planned onsite generation at US data centers, but only about 2 gigawatts operating today. By Cleanview's estimate, xAI's Colossus runs about 1.5 gigawatts, mostly from onsite gas and batteries. And Bloom says Oracle intends to buy up to 2.8 gigawatts of its fuel cells, 1.2 contracted so far. Inside the fence, electrical equipment makers are booming. Vertiv ended 2025 with a 15 billion dollar backlog, up 109 percent in a year, and ABB reports triple-digit growth in data center orders. Eaton, which now pitches a portfolio from utility to chip, estimates the US data center backlog at 307 gigawatts, though only about a fifth converts in the near term. Now, the rack. Power per rack is exploding.

2:49 · The rack

Nvidia's GB200 and GB300 racks draw about 120 to 140 kilowatts, and Vera Rubin racks 180 to 220. In 2025, Jensen Huang said the later Kyber rack could draw up to 600, though reports say it may slip to 2028. At those levels, today's low-voltage busbars run out. Delivering 600 kilowatts at 48 volts would take 12,500 amps, and a one megawatt rack at 54 volts needs up to 200 kilograms of copper busbar. The answer is higher voltage: 800 volts DC, delivered straight to the rack. Nvidia claims it carries 85 percent more power through the same conductor size, with 45 percent less copper than 415 volt AC, and up to 5 percent better efficiency than today's 54 volt racks. Google reports about 3 percent for its own design. Through the Open Compute Project, Google, Meta and Microsoft are standardizing a plus-minus 400 volt version called Mount Diablo. The first 800 volt power racks built to Nvidia's design are due by year-end. In Nvidia's roadmap, solid-state transformers convert medium voltage straight to 800 volts DC around 2029. A solid-state transformer swaps a heavy iron-and-copper transformer for fast power semiconductors. In an EPRI-supervised lab test, an NC State prototype rated up to 1 megawatt lost about 2 percent of its power, versus roughly 4 percent typical for a transformer and rectifier. Startups are racing in: Heron Power raised 140 million dollars, Amperesand 80 million and DG Matrix 60 million, and Eaton bought Resilient Power. SemiAnalysis puts the addressable market at about 32 billion dollars by 2030. The last inch is the hardest.

4:32 · The chip

A Rubin GPU can draw up to 2,300 watts at about one volt, so its regulators must deliver thousands of amps. Grace Hopper already drew up to 1,250 amps per GPU. So power is moving underneath the chip. Vertical power modules from Infineon, Vicor and others sit below the processor, and integrated regulators move into the package. Analog Devices paid 1.5 billion dollars in cash for Empower, a startup in this space, closing the deal in July 2026. Which semiconductor wins depends on the stage. Infineon's view: silicon carbide for the high-voltage steps from grid to rack, gallium nitride for the dense intermediate stages, and silicon at the processor. TrendForce expects silicon carbide and gallium nitride to reach 17 percent of data center power systems in 2026, and more than 30 percent by 2030. For power chip makers, AI is now a growth engine.

5:28 · Market

Infineon expected more than 1.6 billion euros of AI power revenue in the fiscal year just ended, and about 2.5 billion next. In the second quarter, Monolithic Power's enterprise data revenue rose 164 percent, and Texas Instruments' data center revenue roughly doubled. Power supply makers Delta and Lite-On plan their first 800 volt shipments about now, but expect real volume only in 2027. The market is large and growing. Dell'Oro now projects data center physical infrastructure revenue of 120 billion dollars by 2030, up from about 80 billion in its February forecast. And Yole sees the data center power supply market topping 14 billion dollars by 2030. Venture money is flowing into AI power.

6:13 · Startups

A Morgan Stanley report counts 33.5 billion dollars raised this year by US startups tackling AI data center power and compute constraints, nearly double last year. Onsite power is drawing big checks: VoltaGrid announced a 1 billion dollar deal led by Blackstone, about 775 million of it new money, and Mainspring raised 258 million last year. Inside the data center, Empower raised more than 140 million dollars in late 2025, months before Analog Devices agreed to buy it. And the big players are buying. GE Vernova bought out its Prolec GE transformer venture for about 5.3 billion dollars, and Eaton closed its 9.5 billion dollar purchase of Boyd's thermal business. Vertiv is buying UtilityInnovation Group for 1.45 billion dollars plus an earnout, and Navitas closed its purchase of Claros. There are real risks.

7:07 · Outlook

Silicon carbide has been in a glut since 2024. Wolfspeed went through Chapter 11 and cut its debt by about 70 percent, and Chinese wafer makers are gaining share, though some see a rebound. At an industry conference, a panel doubted the industry is ready to run 800 volts safely at scale, and racks under 100 kilowatts may not need it. And demand may be overstated. Wood Mackenzie counts only about 28 percent of 1,066 gigawatts of requested capacity as firm or likely, and New York has paused some permitting for new data centers.

7:39 · Recap

To recap. AI is set to double data center power demand by 2030, and the grid can't keep up. Transformers, turbines and interconnections are bottlenecks, so builders are generating their own power. Racks are heading toward a megawatt, pushing the industry to 800 volts DC and solid-state transformers. At the chip, power is moving vertically, and silicon carbide and gallium nitride are taking share. Money is pouring in, but watch the silicon carbide glut, safety standards and overstated demand. That's the state of data center power in October 2026. This video summarizes public sources and MESH's CORTEX notes. It isn't investment advice, and company figures are the companies' own claims.